Last year at HR Tech we had an imaginary booth.

Imaginary…? I’ll explain.

We decided that while expos can be fun, they’re hard places to learn about vendors; we’ve always said that the best place to learn about Sonar6 is right here on the internet. So we started the “Going to HR Tech? Don’t visit our booth” campaign, featuring our fantastic imaginary booth.

Because it didn’t exist (and therefore had an unlimited budget), it was the best booth ever – laser shows, smoke machines… soon others started spreading the news about our world-beating booth. The one that didn’t exist.

This was funny for a while, but our unbooth made some people unhappy. So this year we are having a real booth. Sort of.

By ’sort of’, we mean we are actually having a real, quite large, cardboard box.

You see, we still think we should spend our money on developing great software, not on shiny stands and acrobats.

But we also want to meet y’all. So come and find us over by the big cardboard box.

The 13th Annual HR Technology® Conference & Exposition is on in Chicago from September 29 to October 1, and if you register in advance with promo code SONAR6 you can save $500 off the registration cost. Check out the agenda to see what’s happening this year.

We’ll be at the Expo (the mysterious and unmissable Booth 145) on September 29 & 30, so if you can’t commit to the full conference grab an Expo Only Pass, come along and have a chat. We might even hand out a few of our highly-coveted t-shirts if we feel the love…

See you there!

Register for the HR Technology® Conference & Expo
Conference: September 29 – October 1, 2010
Expo: September 29 – 30, 2010
McCormick Place, Chicago

Using an HR system? Have an opinion about it? The very nice people at CedarCrestone would like you to complete their HR Systems Survey. It’s a pretty big deal…

Read the rest of this entry »

On April 13 we experienced an unprecedented issue with access to our servers that impacted some of our customers for several hours, especially in the US and Europe.

Firstly an apology. The sort of outage that we experienced is just not supposed to occur. We know this hurt several customers who were trying to complete reviews. The whole team at Sonar6 take this stuff seriously and personally. We are sorry. The following is an explanation as to what actually occurred. Read the rest of this entry »

Cloud computing, SaaS, on-demand computing… more and more software is moving off hard drives and onto networks. Even these guys are getting in on the act. You know by now that Sonar6 is SaaS – but what does that mean?

What IS SaaS?

SaaS is software that’s hosted by a vendor and delivered to clients via a network (in Sonar6’s case, delivered via the internet and accessed with a web browser). Unlike ‘traditional’ software, there are no CDs, no DVDs, nothing to install.

Why not do it the usual way?

SaaS has a couple of major advantages over locally installed software: it usually costs less, and it’s far more flexible:

• You pay for the actual software, not for production and distribution costs
• You always have access to the latest versions, updates, upgrades and bug fixes
• You can influence the software’s evolution. Flexible development means SaaS solutions can easily adapt to the ways actual users interact with the software
• You avoid getting locked in to one product or one vendor. SaaS is usually subscription-based so if your needs change it’s relatively painless to switch to something different. It’s a little bit trickier to be that flexible if you’ve spent thousands of dollars on software and the tech to support it!

What do you need to know?

In our 5 Weeks to Really Useful Performance Reviews, we suggest some questions to ask vendors when you’re looking at performance management software. We go into specifics, but the things you need to know are the same regardless of the type of SaaS solution.

As a starting point, we quite like this list of considerations from Xactly Corp (a Sonar6 customer and a leading provider of on-demand sales compensation solutions, so they know whereof they speak!)

Remember Wise Consulting? We profiled them in a case study last year.

The big news is that Wise Consulting is now a Sonar6 service partner (our first on the East Coast) and will be providing consultation and implementation services to clients in the US. We’re excited to have them on board – it’s always gratifying when a client digs Sonar6 so much they want to share the love with others!

Some kind words from Wise Consulting President Jennifer Wise:

“From the first moment I saw Sonar6, I knew this was a great fit for evaluating and aligning our dynamic workforce.  As consultants, we are anxious to bring this success to our clients and Sonar6 customers.  We are proud to be selected by Sonar6 to represent them!”

We’re really looking forward to working closely with the Wise Consulting team to reach more of our US clients.  Exciting times…

Read more: Sonar6 & Wise Consulting Press Release

February seems to be a ‘why do we do performance reviews?’ month, with everyone busy completing their reviews or getting all introspective, pondering why they’re necessary in the first place.

Some very interesting opinion pieces on just this topic have cropped up recently: check out what Jim Holincheck, Bob Sutton and Todd Dewett have to say.

We tend to side with those arguing that the traditional understanding of performance reviews – forms filled out once a year, a perfunctory conversation (if you’re lucky), receiving your number and spot on the bell curve – is probably deserving of all the hate. Useful reviews on the other hand (and we can help you achieve those) have a place in any successful company.

One thing we think it’s important to remember is there’s a difference between performance reviews and ratings. If you don’t actually need to give ratings and rank employees, why bother? If they’re a necessary evil (ie, used when calculating compensation), then ratings and rankings still have to be reached via a robust review process.

Another thing to bear in mind: that normal distribution graph we all love so much doesn’t account for shifts over time (unless your organization really is extremely average and nobody ever gets better or worse. In which case you probably have other worries). Let go of the bell curve and base your decisions on your actual people information – it means something.

Useful reviews aren’t about assigning numbers, they’re about the conversation. Whatever tools you’re using should be gathering the information that will help you discuss performance with your employees, your managers, your exec… If they’re not, they’re not doing their job.

We don’t hate reviews, and we don’t think they’re going anywhere any time soon, but we really do feel for those poor people currently suffering through their ‘traditional’ reviews. There is a better way!

So how do you feel about performance reviews? Take the quiz to see if you’re one of the haters. Nobody’s claiming scientific accuracy, but we’re sure most people will identify with at least a couple of the responses…

Our content manager made cookies for the festive season. How cute are the little Sonar6 gingerbread people?!!

Thanks Karen!

People thrive on recognition and feedback, and this doesn’t change once they step through the office door. This is the age of Facebook and Twitter; of immediate, continuous feedback. We get it from all angles in our everyday life, so why wouldn’t we expect it at work?

Too often, feedback is delayed (annual performance review, anyone?) or negative (even though this does have its place). How often do you give praise or celebrate success? And do you give positive feedback across the board: to your top paid executives as well as the little guys working away in the background?

It doesn’t have to get complicated: employee recognition isn’t just about elaborate rewards or bonuses. While it may seem blindingly obvious, research has shown that just thanking employees results in increased engagement – and an engaged employee is a more productive employee.

As many of you know, our labs have been hard at work building a much-expanded 360° review functionality for Sonar6. The core principal behind 360° in Sonar6 is that it’s really useful getting feedback from others for many things that are measured in a performance review. For instance, if I am rating a salesperson on how well they work with customers, it’s great to get feedback directly from customers.

One of the configurable aspects of our new system is that 360° feedback can either be anonymous, or can be attributed to the person who gave the feedback.

There is a tradition of 360° feedback being anonymous. When 360° reviews were primarily used as part of a leadership development framework, it was thought that anonymous feedback would be more candid. Of course, some will tell you it was also full of inaccuracies and injustice!

Newer uses of 360° (as in Sonar6) are less about developing leaders and more about gathering input into a performance review process for all staff. In these scenarios we are seeing lots of companies go down an open feedback path, believing that any challenges in getting candid feedback are outweighed by using the process to improve team dialog.

We thought we’d make a list of the benefits of each approach from our research.

Why anonymous is good

1. People are more likely to give candid, objective feedback
2. Reduces the likelihood of punitive consequences for poor ratings (especially from subordinates)
3. Allows people with less forthright personalities to give feedback
4. Allows management to couch potentially bad or damaging feedback

Why attributed is good

1. If you are accountable for your feedback, you will put more effort into providing it
2. Prevents “back-stabbing”
3. Encourages team dialog and getting feedback out into the open
4. Removes some of the ability to “game” the system
5. Some opinions are more important than others (eg a close work-mate or a big customer), so it is useful to know
6. It is easier to address an issue if you can understand where the feedback comes from
7. Often the people with the strongest opinion (either very positive or very negative) want their feedback to be attributed
8. It doesn’t feel like your destiny is controlled by a group of anonymous people

It was probably best summed up by one manager I talked to who said “The ideal is an environment where you can give direct open feedback, safe in the knowledge that you won’t be somehow punished for it.”

I am really interested in opinions on this. Please comment!